A letter from the bank arrived in an envelope addressed to my former company.
It was only an old account statement Mrs. Bell had found among the papers she stored.
I recognized the branch address and the name of a banker I had once worked with.
I gave the document to Russell instead of calling the bank and demanding answers.
He checked whether it belonged to the same account already described in the trial exhibits.
It did.
There were no new transactions on the page, but the statement format helped him identify how the bank had labeled transfer references.
A small administrative detail could explain why two sets of documents used different descriptions for the same movement of money.
I had almost overlooked it because I was searching for a confession rather than a reconciliation.
Russell reminded me that discrepancies sometimes had ordinary causes.
The task was to test them, not celebrate every difference.
That afternoon I updated the timeline and left the statement in its protective sleeve.
When I finished, I washed the windows in Opal's kitchen.
The outside world looked remarkably clear through clean glass.
The more records we examined, the more I noticed how often people treated familiarity as proof.
I recognized a supplier's name, so I initially assumed an invoice was genuine.
Russell showed me that a real company could still appear on an inaccurate invoice.
An authentic email address did not prove every claim inside a message.
A bank transaction could establish that money moved without proving who directed it.
He kept bringing me back to what the record showed.
It was tiring work.
But by Friday I could explain our concerns without adding guesses.
I considered that progress.
I went home, washed my work clothes, and put my questions away until Monday.
At the end of one meeting, Russell gave me an assignment that sounded almost childish.
“Write down every password policy you remember.”
I stared at him.
“Passwords?”
“Who assigned accounts? Who reset them? Did employees ever share logins?”
I remembered the purchasing terminal in our first warehouse.
Two staff members had used the same account because the system was old and a second license cost money.
When we upgraded, I insisted we stop sharing credentials.
Trevor complained that remembering more passwords delayed the morning shipments.
Monica offered to maintain the access list.
I remembered handing her that responsibility with relief.
Russell asked whether I'd reviewed the list after that.
“No.”
He didn't look surprised.
I felt ashamed anyway.
“Is this why they could blame me?”
“It may help us understand what the evidence does and doesn't establish,” he said.
A login showing your username isn't always the same as proof that you personally authorized a transaction.”
That evening I took out old invoices and wrote down the names of vendors I recognized.
Some were companies I'd negotiated with myself.
Others had been suppliers for a single unusual order.
I used a different symbol for names I did not remember.
I did not label them fraudulent.
When Opal saw the papers on the table, she asked whether I wanted to use the study for casework and leave the dining room for meals.
I agreed.
It was another boundary I'd forgotten a person could have.
I began shutting the folder at six each evening unless a deadline required otherwise.
Some nights my thoughts kept working after I closed it.
But the dishes still needed washing.
The garden needed watering.
And Opal had discovered she liked crossword puzzles more when I helped.
Russell worked slowly.
He could not obtain private bank records merely because I had hired him.
But the documents in the old prosecution exhibits identified the recipient accounts, and public business filings supplied a few more pieces.
Crescent Administrative Services had been registered to a mailing address in a commercial building.
Its listed organizer was not Trevor or Monica.
It was a man named Eric Voss.
I did not recognize him.
Russell found an archived vendor form in my paperwork bearing Eric’s name.
The contact telephone number, however, matched a number printed on an old sales presentation from Trevor’s office.
“That’s an association,” Russell said.
“Not yet proof of who controlled the account.”
I carried his report to Nadia.
She reviewed the exhibits and requested certified records where she could.
We discovered that part of the criminal case rested on an employee’s testimony that I had given instructions over the telephone.
The vendor name looked harmless on the screen.
Crescent Administrative Services could have been a billing contractor or a software firm.
Russell refused to call it a shell company without supporting records.
We searched ordinary business filings first.
There were multiple organizations with similar names.
One had closed years before my company was founded.
Another had no obvious relationship to Ohio medical supplies.
We worked through addresses and registration dates one at a time.
When an old filing listed a correspondence address near Trevor's former sales territory, I felt my pulse rise.
Russell wrote the address down without smiling.
“A connection worth checking,” he said.
“Not an answer.”
The weeks of waiting began to wear on me.
At work I dropped a jar of olives while carrying groceries into Opal’s pantry.
It shattered across the tile.
My shoulders stiffened before she entered.
“I'll pay for it.”
“It's six dollars, Rebecca.”
“I broke it.”
“You're going to clean it up. That'll be enough.”
She brought a broom and showed me where she'd put the dustpan.
I knelt to sweep the glass and suddenly remembered the disciplinary reports in prison for tiny mistakes.
Opal did not know why I was crying.
She merely put a towel on the counter and stepped away.
A few days later, Russell called with another practical problem.
Some corporate records could be obtained publicly.
Private bank and internal company systems would require cooperation or lawful legal process.
He wanted me to stop calling former employees directly until Nadia could advise on witness contact.
I disliked being told not to do something.
He explained that careless contact could create disputes about pressure, contamination of testimony, or what had actually been said.
I agreed to keep a log instead.
For every lead, I entered the date, source, documents supporting it, and unresolved questions.
By the time the page was full, my old work habits were returning.
I was doing more than waiting to be believed.
I was helping preserve a reliable record.
The employee was called Marlene Ortiz.
I remembered her vividly.
She had cried on the witness stand.
Nadia asked whether I knew where she worked now.
I did not.
“I will handle any contact,” she said.
“You’re not to chase her.”
Meanwhile, my ordinary life continued.
Opal’s furnace stopped working.
We waited four days for a replacement part.
I took two buses to buy groceries when her car needed service.
On Sunday mornings, we listened to an old radio program while I made pancakes.
Sometimes she asked about my family.
Sometimes I asked about hers.
Her only son lived in Cincinnati.
They loved each other, but he visited less than she wanted.
“He thinks I need a supervisor,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I need somebody to tell me when the furnace is making that noise again.”
The next development came in a cardboard box from my former lawyer’s office.
Inside were photocopies of bank records, witness statements, and a printed list of electronic evidence.
Near the end of the list was a reference to a backup drive.
The prosecution had received a data export from the company’s accounting software.
I read the description three times.
I did not remember my lawyer discussing the underlying metadata with me.
Nadia did not assume it had been withheld.
She requested the transcript and corresponding discovery records to find out exactly what had been produced and considered.
For once, the fact that something was missing from my memory was not treated as the same thing as its being absent from the world.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: Monica Arrived With Cash And Threats But I Refused To Give Her The Confrontation
The Woman Who Asked About My Sentence Offered Something More Useful Than Sympathy
Part 5 of 16
